


rumor has it (the dead don't die)

by Kangoo



Category: Warcraft - All Media Types
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Canon-typical Undeath, Chronic Resurrection Disorder, Hurt/Comfort, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-08-23
Updated: 2019-08-23
Packaged: 2020-09-24 21:27:00
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 3,268
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20365351
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Kangoo/pseuds/Kangoo
Summary: Haven't you heard? Kael'thas is dead.





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

  * Translation into Русский available: [rumor has it (the dead don't die)](https://archiveofourown.org/works/20426684) by [feloriel](https://archiveofourown.org/users/feloriel/pseuds/feloriel)

> *turn up 10 months late with starbuck* hey what's up i can't write
> 
> i refuse to write anything good from now on it's garbage and garbage ONLY 
> 
> two chapters because honestly i don't like the second one but. i like romance. so you can totally stop here if you just want the angst but there's a hug in chapter 2 if that's your thing.

“I know you.”

The surgeon looks up from Koltira’s arm, currently detached from his body, to Koltira himself. He holds Koltira’s inquisitive stare for a moment then clicks his tongue and goes back to the deep gash he’s currently sewing shut. He tore his wrist trying to wrench free of his restraints, again. The surgeon’s current irritation is as likely to be about having to fix it once more as it is to be about the small talk.

“I swear I do,” he insists when the man doesn’t offer any insight. His memories of this place tend to be… blurry, confused, but he’s sure he knows this face. He just can’t place it.

“Of course you do,” the surgeon says, with an air of trying to be placating while maintaining his completely deadpan tone of voice. “I’ve been stitching you back together since day one. I’m familiar. Stand up straight, please.”

Koltira does so even as he shakes his head in denial. “You don’t look like a doctor.”

He makes a knot in the thread, pulling it with his teeth to make sure it’s tight, and starts sewing Koltira’s arm back to his shoulder. “I’m not,” he mutters. “But I know how to sew.”

That’s not reassuring. But neither is distracting the guy currently in charge of the orientation of your arm compared to your body, so Koltira falls silent and lets him work. The thought lingers, though, nagging him. This face, this voice… Could they have known each other, before? A fellow Farstrider, maybe? No, he can still name every Farstrider he served with. But it feels too important to have been just a passing recognition, the way you see someone in the street and know you saw them before, somewhere different.

The surgeon finishes his work with a quiet hum of satisfaction, tie the thread tightly and cuts the excess. Finally he moves away. “You’re all set. Someone should be here any moment to take you back to your… cage.”

Koltira can’t muster up the energy to be angry about it. He’s gotten too used to it, the routine of halfhearted torture, sometimes interrupted by Sylvanas dragging him out to throw him at her enemies like a forgotten sword picked up from a dusty corner of the armory. He throws the surgeon a vacant look, even though he has his back to him as he’s cleaning his tools and putting them back where they belong. Koltira is surprised to see the tension in the surgeon’s shoulders, a mixture of frustration and rage. He opens his mouth to ask —

There, in the distance, the sound of… fighting. His head snaps toward the door. He sees the surgeon do the same in the corner of his eye. They remain still, staring at the door, as the sound comes closer, accompanied by voices. Is this an attack by the Alliance? At this point, Koltira would welcome it, if only as a distraction that could allow his own escape. He dares a look at the surgeon. He’s not paying any attention to his charge, watching the door with an unreadable expression on his face. It would be easy to cross the distance between them, grab a scalpel—

The door bursts open. Behind it stands a death knight, and next to him…

“_Thassarian_,” Koltira whispers, more out of reflex than thought. He blinks, frowns when the man doesn’t disappear as an hallucination should. “You-”

His friend strikes through the room, ignoring the surgeon entirely, and doesn’t give Koltira the time to jump off the observation table he’s sitting on before he’s… hugging him.

Koltira freezes at the touch for too many reasons to count — discomfort, fear, surprise, others he doesn’t care to name. But Thassarian is there, real and solid against him, and though he doesn’t go as far as to reciprocate the embrace he does relax in his hold. He looks over Thassarian’s shoulder and sees the other Deathknight with their runeblade at the surgeon’s throat. He doesn’t seem particularly moved by the threat, staring back at them with his head tilted to the side like a curious bird.

Thassarian steps away but his hands remain at Koltira’s sides, hovering.

“We’re here to free you,” he says, giving him an uncharacteristically anxious look.

“It’s been such a long time,” Koltira whispers.

Something hardens in Thassarian’s face and he nods, once, as if the gesture pains him. “Indeed, it has.” He straightens up, his hand falling back to his sides. “We must hurry before the guards come.”

Koltira jumps off the table while Thassarian opens a deathgate. He glances to the surgeon, still watching them with a placid look of disinterest on his face.

“You’re not going to stop us.”

“What is it with you and stating the obvious?” He muses. “I’m no more loyal to the Banshee Queen than any of you are. Stay or go, for all I care.” Then, muttering to himself, “At least I won’t have to stitch you back together again.”

None of them ask him if he wants to come along. He’s not a death knight, not one of them, and they forgot how to feel sympathy for those outside the Ebon Blade. They walk through the deathgate, Thassarian first, then Koltira, then the third death knight, just in case the surgeon had the sudden urge to drag Koltira out of the portal at the last possible second.

He does no such thing. Only watches them go, and sighs tiredly as the rip in space closes itself and disappears.

-

“You could have done anything, _anything!_ To stop them.”

He rolls his eyes behind the Banshee Queen’s back and, when she turns around to point an accusing finger at him, raise his two wrists with a meaningful look toward the rune-engraved manacles weighing them down.

“You,” she hisses, “Are not reliant on your magic to fight.”

“Aren’t I?”

“You know how to use a sword!”

“Oh, yes, of course. A sword. Which I absolutely possess,” he deadpans, gesturing to the empty spaces at his hips where a sword would be — if he had one.

She sneers but doesn’t retort anything, too frustrated to find words sufficiently cutting. She turns around and goes back to her pacing, her collected Queen persona falling piece by piece under his placid stare. He’s rather sure there is no one left alive in the world who Sylvanas lets see her this way. Unmasked. Entirely herself. No one left who knew her before who could recognize the changes now.

No one but him.

Her pacing stops suddenly in the middle of the room. He braces himself. She flexes her fingers then, in the matter of a second, whirls around and has him pin to the wall by the throat, baring her sharp teeth to his face.

“I should destroy you where you stand and feed you to the _ghouls_,” she hisses.

“You won’t,” he replies, with a hint of regret.

Instead of the scowl he expected after proving her wrong, she smiles her sharp, mocking smile, and lets him drop. “You’re right. You’d like it too much.”

He doesn’t grace that with a reply, only walks out of the room. He has the annoying feeling this is what she wanted him to do, but he doesn’t hate himself enough to go back just to be contrary.

-

The Legion is on the move. He hasn’t seen it of his own eyes, but he can hear it — the news echoes through the Undercity, metal clanging as Forsaken soldiers prepare for war. There are outsiders, too, moving in and out, carrying messages and orders. Each passage leaves Sylvanas in a darker mood than the last, and he has taken to avoiding whatever part of the Undercity she is currently haunting. Unfortunately she knows where he likes to linger the most and escaping her means being chased away from his usual dark corners, closer to the surface.

He gets to see more people. He’s not a fan of that development.

Currently he sits high enough above the foot traffic to be left alone, shrouded in the shadows that permeate the city. He wants to say he’s bored, but he has been bored for so long, tired for so long, that it’s hard to dissociate it from his neutral mood.

“Hi.”

He blinks out of his thoughts, too used to the silent creeping of the Forsaken to be spooked by the sudden appearance of a demon hunter at his right side. She’s perched precariously, her wings making the space an even tighter fit than it is for him, and her blind felfire eyes are staring at, or through, him. He doesn’t question her presence: they tend to appear everywhere you don’t expect or want them to.

“Hello,” he greets, then, because it’s usually the question that follows, “Sylvanas is in the labs.”

People seems to think that, because he’s also an undead blood elf, he’ll know where she is at all times. With time it became easier to keep tabs on her at all time than to tell every passing stranger that no, he did not have a sixth sense for Sylvanas’ geographical position.

“Cool,” the demon hunter says, easily broadcasting the fact that she did not, actually, care about this. “And what are you doing here?”

“As you can see, I’m sitting.”

She makes an irritated sound. “No, what are _you _doing _here_,” she repeats, emphasizing the words as if it would help him understand her meaning.

“I’m a Forsaken,” he replies, somewhat bitterly. “This is the Undercity. I’m the one that should be asking. Actually, I am. What are you doing here?”

She ignores his question and only presses closer into his personal space, almost hitting him with her horns as she forces him to look her in the eyes by putting her face an inch from his.

“You’re Kael’thas,” she says, like it’s obvious. Like it _means_ something. “You shouldn’t be here.”

Fear sparks through his body like lightning, like fire. “Haven’t you heard?” He leans back, plasters bravado on his face. “Kael’thas is dead.”

The way she scoffs tell him she doesn’t buy it, but she leans back and then forward, balancing over the edge as she prepares to fly off. But she’s still looking at him over her shoulder, bright green peeking from behind inky strands of hair.

“Every Illidari has been called to the front.” she says, enunciating the words carefully around her sharp teeth. “You shouldn’t be here.”

And then she drops off the ledge, leaving him to stare at the space she just vacated. It only just hits him now that she has no reason to be here, either. The demon hunters were all sealed away when their master died. Who freed them? Maiev, most likely. She’s the only one with the power to do so. The situation must be more dire than he thought if the Warden had to seek the help of the Illidaris.

But they’re notoriously difficult to lead, likely to disperse as soon as they’re free to each follow their own hunt. There’s only one person in the world capable to call them to the front and be listened to, and—

Haven’t you heard? Illidan’s dead.


	2. Chapter 2

It haunts him as the war rages on. Sylvanas drags him with her when she leaves the Undercity to lead the Forsaken against the Legion, hands him a sword and tells him to make himself useful. He’d refuse just to antagonize her, but— the air is too sweet on the surface, the opportunity to wield a blade and finally do something with himself too good to throw away out of sheer spite. Though it is tempting to turn the sword on Sylvanas, he doesn’t. They were… not friends, but allies, once, and she is not alone in blaming him for her curse. He’s failed her, failed their people; maybe this is the least he deserves.

He comes to regret it. Stabbing her would have felt quite satisfying, and if he were well and truly dead he wouldn’t be in his present situation.

She threw him at a squad of Forsaken and told him to make himself useful before disappearing to do whatever politicking the Horde-Alliance ceasefire is requiring. There’s still a part of him that urges him to fight the Legion until there’s nothing of it left and it has proven to be a surer warden than her presence: where would he go, when all the fighting is here?

He abandoned the other Forsaken behind some time ago, leaving them to their own device. They should be smart enough to survive without him and, if they’re not, then he doesn’t care. He needs to be alone, needs to be in the middle of the fight, with nothing but demons around him. There’s a satisfaction to hacking away at them. It settles something restless in him, dispels some of the wrongness born of his undeath.

And then his piece of shit sword breaks.

This wouldn’t be a problem if he carried a spare one, like he used to before Sylvanas decided to lay claim on him. This wouldn’t be a problem if he hadn’t isolated himself from the Forsaken soldiers supposed to keep an eye on him.

This wouldn’t be a problem if he still had his magic.

He stabs what’s left of the blade into the head of a demon coming at him and doesn’t manage to wrench it free before he has to step out of the way of another attack. Unarmed, he can only dodge the claws swiping toward his face, stumble out of the way of a blow that would have decapitated his head straight off his shoulders — it’s not a hard feat, it’s sewn on — and, out of option, block snapping jaws with his arm.

Light, he’s dead, but it hurts.

A kick dislodges the felhound long enough for him to back away out of its direct range, but he can’t fool himself in thinking he has any chance of making it out alive. Or, well, undead. There are too many demons, he _wanted_ there to be too many, it was _fun _until his sword broke.

It’s not a death wish if you’re already dead, right? It’s just… your body trying to right itself. It’s fine. It’s natural. He wanted it. Still a bit pissed off that he’s going to die because Sylvanas was stingy though.

A shadow falls over him and he drops to the ground out of habit. Whatever flying shit the Legion has around is always trying to sweep people out of the battlefield and with claws that big he doesn’t have high expectations towards his stitches’ sturdiness. Better impaled by a felguard than ripped apart mid-air by some giant bat.

Giant, torn wings fill his vision. A flash of felfire, too quick to follow. A splatter of blood — not his, though, not the way the ground hisses and smokes at the contact. Demon blood.

This isn’t one of the Legion’s beasts.

When he lifts his head again, they are surrounded by a wide circle of dead demons. He is careful to keep his hair in his face as he rises, careful not to look Illidan in the eyes, careful not too think about it too hard, so careful as he steps between demon corpses and takes his broken sword out of the corpse he abandoned it into.

“Thank you for the help,” he says, his back to Illidan.

The answering silence makes him wonder if the man already too flight, but, no. He can feel his presence like a flame on the back of his neck, painful and comforting all at once. He debates just walking off. A Forsaken would have no reason to linger.

He’s dead, he’s dead, he’s _dead_. He doesn’t get to care.

“So it is true then,” Illidan rumbles. “You’re back.”

Ah. Oh course. Illidan never learned how to leave anything well alone.

“If that’s what you want to call it.” He still doesn’t turn around. He stares at the jagged point of the sword, ignores how his fingers have reflexively tightened around the pommel. He doesn’t need to breathe but he does it anyway, grappling for normalcy in a situation that lost every hope for it a long time ago.

“How?”

Illidan gives nothing away in his tone, doesn’t move towards or away from him. He’s not used to seeing him so restrained, and wonders if death finally hammered some caution into his stubborn brain.

“Got decapitated in Outlands. Blood elves brought back the rest of my body. Sylvanas got her hands on the two parts, stitched them together, and _voila_.” He tilts the blade until it reflects his face, pale and lifeless, the hint of stitches wrapping around his neck and mostly covered by his high collar. “I’m here. Whatever that means.”

Only silence answers him. The air is heavy like the hour before a storm, stifling, electric. He has the sudden irrational urge to swallow, the weird feeling that he can’t breathe. Of course he can’t. But usually it only bothers him on a psychological level, not… not like that. Not like Illidan’s presence is weighing on him, stealing the breath out of his lungs. He whirls around, opening his arms as if to say, _there I am_. As if to say, _that’s it, that’s all it’s ever going to be._

“Don’t just _stand_ there,” he begs, half a laugh caught in his throat, more manic than amused. “Say something.”

Illidan is staring at him, expression unreadable. Silent. Unmoving. Death-like. He needs him to be angry, to be sad, to hate him or to leave or to do _something_, anything. But he doesn’t. He just… looks at him.

Undead can’t cry, what with the whole ‘no bodily fluid’ thing, but his eyes sting like he’s about to and he’s smiling, so much that it hurts, but everything hurts when Illidan is looking at him like that. Like he doesn’t even know him, like he doesn’t care enough to be angry. He grits his teeth around the sob trying to wrench its way out of his chest, wraps his arms around him, feels his manic grin twist into something he wouldn’t recognize, either.

A shadow falls over him. Illidan, walking closer. Still with that look on his face, like he’s faced with something he doesn’t understand, like he wants to pick him apart to see what makes him tick. Soon enough he’s in his space, surrounding him, his wings curled around him, careful not to touch him. Illidan’s hands hover on either sides of his face, the tip of his claws a hair’s breadth from brushing his skin. Terrifyingly, maddeningly close.

“It really is you,” he whispers with something like wonder in his voice, something like fear in the shaking of his hands. “And I thought I had lost you.”

Kael’thas—

Breaks.

He collapses against Illidan, clinging to his shoulders as if he’d fall without the support, as if he’d crumble to dust and ashes without him. Illidan bend to his height, bring his arms around him, holding him so carefully, like he’s about to shatter to pieces.

“I’m sorry,” he hiccups, pressing his cheek against Illidan’s shoulder. “I’m sorry, I’m so sorry. I missed you so much.”

A hand comes to cradle the side of his neck, thumb pressing lightly against the never-healed line bisecting his neck.

“The Legion and death itself haven’t managed to keep me away from you,” he whispers against the crown of Kael’thas’ head, fierce like a wounded animal, “But I’ll never give them the opportunity to try ever again.”


End file.
